Yu-Gi-Oh! 7 Trials to Glory: World Championship for Game Boy Adv Reviews by Gamers

As long as those packs of cards continue to sell, and as long as the quirky anime still plays on Cartoon Network, Konami will continue to develop games in the Yu-Gi-Oh series. No franchise has had more titles on the Game Boy Advance than Konami's card series, with the exception of the umpteen Mega Man spinoffs that's hit the handheld over the course of its life. It's a cash-cow, absolutely, and the latest game in the series is quite a mouthful: Yu-Gi-Oh! 7 Trials to Glory: World Championship Tournament 2005, if anything, quite possibly the winner of the longest title ever conceived for a GBA game. But even though it's got the issue of being "Yet Another Yu-Gi-Oh! Game," what Konami created as the eighth appearance of the series on the portable is, so far, the best rendition of the card battler, so fear not you fans who are afraid the series is more of the same. Those new to the series are yet again SOL, though, since the game interface and design is only tailored for those taught in the ways of the Yu-Gi-Oh card game.

Yu-Gi-Oh has grown into an almost Pokemon-like phenomenon. Or, at the very least, that's what Konami wants you to believe with all these franchise sequels and spinoffs that's happened over the past few years. Popularity begets that "cool to hate" status, though, and any mention of Yu-Gi-Oh is usually followed by a round of eye-rolling in the videogame community. Anyone confident enough in their gaming lifestyle can see that there's a lot to be experienced in the Yu-Gi-Oh game experience, and it's almost Chess-like in strategy because there's so much that can happen in a single turn of the card.

Simply put, players take turns putting down a single monster in attack or defense position, as well as activating magic powers that could give the player or his monsters enhanced abilities...or take away something from the opposition. Flip-effect cards can change the course of a battle; putting them face down may force the opponent to attack the card, which will activate a special ability that could hurt the opponent, his monster, or help the owner of that card. The match is over when a player's 8000 hit points is whittled away to nothing. It's all a matter of how decks are created that can determine a player's strength in battle. Though you're still dependent on the luck of the card draw, which can swing the outcome either way.

For the current year's addition of the Yu-Gi-Oh card game on the GBA, Konami's actually offered up an even tighter presentation than last year. Most of the effort went into the actual card database; though it's far from what you'd consider an intuitive interface, the organization menu is a lot more tightly designed to make deck creation easier than it has been. The set of cards has also been revamped with a different balance than last year; Konami promises a thousand cards are in the cartridge again this year, dividing up 800 classic cards from previous games in the series with 200 new ones. The actual card battling takes place on a much more "tipped" board to accurately depict playing on a virtual table, though it's not much different than the previous years' top-down perspective.

The major problems that have arisen from previous games in the series haven't been remedied for the update. Konami still has yet to create a Yu-Gi-Oh title that actually teaches how to play the game, instead insisting on aiming every game in the Yu-Gi-Oh series at people already familiar with the brand. This is an extremely arrogant stance, and it's just frustrating to sift through "Yet Another Yu-Gi-Oh" without any sort of tutorial. And in the 2005 offering, it's even more alienating: the designers don't even give players a "starter deck" to play off at the beginning. Instead, they have to buy booster packs of cards, open each one, and then place each individual card in a hand. Essentially, anyone buying this game will have to not only know the rules of the game, but also how to create a deck from scratch. Arrogance at its best. Or its worst.

The game now adds what we've been asking Konami to include for the past few iteration: an "RPG" aspect that both the classic Card Fighters Clash NeoGeo game and Pokemon Trading Card Game on the black-and-white Game Boy had from the beginning. But this RPG is so loose that there's not even a story attached to it. It's simply wandering from place to place, challenging every man, woman, child, dog, or cat to a card battle in order to win money for additional booster packs. It's basic dialogue from the challenger, then right into battle without really knowing just how good this challenger actually is.

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